Their Only Escape
by Reaper Nanashi
Summary: <html><head></head>Larger than life, the kaiju meant danger and death and were feared accordingly. Everyone wondered why they did it, made up a thousand and one theories to explain why. WHY? Yet even when an opportunity presented itself—twice, no less—no one asked. They were seen as simple attack dogs, and that was where the curiosity stopped. Turns out it was a bit more complicated than that.</html>


**Author's Notes:** My first _Pacific Rim_ fic! This is, obviously, very short. Enjoy it anyway!

**Word Count:** 361

**Rating:** K+ (implied violence)

**Spoilers:** Naw. And anyway, it's been more than a year now. If you haven't seen it, get off your lazy bum and pry your nerd friend's fingers off a copy.

**Date Submitted:** 10/07/14

**Claimer/Disclaimer:** _Pacific Rim_ belongs to those to whom it belongs. I just play in the sandbox. With a PFD. Because we all know the good stuff is like quicksand.

**The Reasoning Behind It:** I'm poking my head into this idea really quick—just curious about what we see and are told about the kaiju without there being further exploration (hive mind, potential self-awareness). It would probably have been more interesting if I hadn't kept the perspective so general, but whatevs—it is what it is.

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><p>"<em>We have all been placed on this earth to discover our own path, and we will never be happy if we live someone else's idea of life."<em>

– James Van Praagh

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><p>It was a relief to die.<p>

Their masters needed to know that every part of them functioned as intended, so the first part ever woven into existence was the brain. After that the nerves, blood vessels, and organs were stitched into place one piece at a time and then tested. The method was generally effective but the science crude—the Masters did whatever was the quickest, not the most humane—and prone to spontaneous, catastrophic failures. It was an agony from which there was no escape.

They hated the Masters.

Fear was the greatest of motivators, however. Rebelling against the Masters, despite the vast difference in size and strength, simply was not an option. The Masters made it very clear that noncompliance would be answered with pain upon pain upon pain; the plain fact was that they were never truly _not_ in pain, so they did what they could to escape worse pain.

Thus they fought.

They fought each other to the death in giant battling rings while the Masters looked on, some laughing and placing bets while others observed the matches with hard, calculating gazes. Constructed to be intelligent and to learn and to know the thoughts and experiences of every other one of their kind, they were aware their fights had no meaning beyond discovering what was considered superior design, but they did not mind killing one another. Killing meant that the one who lost the battle would be escaping the pain.

They fought, too, the Masters' enemies.

How small those creatures were! Smaller even than the Masters. Yet those tiny lives had constructed great carapaced beasts of identical image, beasts designed to fight against them, beasts that had no life until the creatures stepped inside. Those constructs never seemed to experience any pain. It made them wonder why the Masters wanted to kill the creatures, because the little things hardly seemed to be cruel and unforgivable, but those qualities also earned their jealousy and made it easy to fight. Because it was unfair. And again, for that reason, they did not mind killing. Or being killed.

Either way, it meant escaping pain, and that was all that mattered.

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><p><span><strong>Answers To Questions You Didn't Even Know You Wanted To Ask:<strong>

Something in me wants this to be longer, but I can't tell whether that's because it needs to be or because that's just what I do. I mean, I **could** make it longer, but it's hard to do that in the style I've chosen—I'd have to pick names and the like, and I wanted to keep the viewpoint nonspecific.

—

If you feel it is within your purview, please take the time to leave a review!

~RN (LS)


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